Califone frontman Tim Rutili has been busy since the band’s 2006 release, Roots & Crowns. Recently involved with a brief summer reunion of his previous band, Red Red Meat (in conjunction with the Sub Pop reissue of their seminal Bunny Gets Paid, which was reviewed here earlier this year), Rutili has also simultaneously directed an […]
Music
Coverage of the music scene in Humboldt County with upcoming shows from locals and out-of-town acts, reviews, interviews and more.
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Good Sound
Once upon a time EOTO was an acronym. "It used to stand for End of Time Observatory," explained the duo’s drummer/beat manipulator Jason Hann calling from his Venice Beach home. "It just got to be too much to explain in interviews — people thought we were talking about something negative like the end of the […]
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Entranced
When your band is from San Francisco and you describe your music as psychedelic rock, comparisons to the psychedelic ’60s are perhaps inevitable. Such is the case with Wooden Shjips. "We think of ourselves more as a rock ’n’ roll band, but we get tagged with psychedelic," said Wooden Shjips "ringmaster" Ripley Johnson in a […]
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Outside Lands
The heat was killing us. The walk through Golden Gate Park lasted forever. But finally, my mom, brother and I reached Outside Lands, the festival we’d been looking forward to for months. After cooling off with strawberries and ice cream, we scoped a spot for The Duke Spirit. People crowded forward as the band appeared […]
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The Sun Came Out
New Zealand singer/songwriter, Neil Finn, Crowded House’s frontman, has collected musicians, singer/songwriters and bands from all across the globe — for the second time. Finn’s new 7 Worlds Collide project brings alum members from his first effort — including his brother Tim Finn (Split Enz), Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway, guitarist Johnny Marr and […]
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The Guilty Office
From the early 1980s, the New Zealand pop scene has flourished, mostly through the Christchurch-based label Flying Nun Records. Bands such as The Clean, The Chills and The Bats emerged from beyond the South Island of New Zealand environs with a distinct type of pop music — often spare, minimal — catching attention of like-minded […]
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The Soul in the Melody
By the time you read this, Irish fiddler extraordinaire Martin Hayes will likely be at home in Connecticut preparing for next week’s West Cost tour with his guitarist music partner Dennis Cahill. But last weekend Hayes was back where he came from, in County Clare, Ireland playing at something called the Tulla Traditional Music Festival. […]
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Humgrass
You’ve heard of the Northwest String Summit, the annual gathering of sting music bands and fans near Portland. Humboldt has its own version, on a much smaller scale: The String Thing. Chief instigator is Ryan Roberts, who plays guitar in Absynth Quintet, a stringband that falls somewhere along newgrass/gypsy-grass lines. He hopes to make the […]
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Popular Songs
For over two decades, Yo La Tengo, fronted by the husband/wife duo of vocalist/guitarist Ira Kaplan and vocalist/drummer/percussionist Georgia Hubley, have crafted a wide array of slightly subverted rock songs that leans toward ’60s pop melodies. After the cementing of the group’s core with the addition of bassist James McNew in 1993, the Hoboken, N.J.-based […]
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Lions Roar
How did the lion become synonymous with reggae music? It’s probably because Rastafarian’s revere the Ethiopian king known as His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Or maybe it’s just because the big cats are powerful and have cool-looking manes. A pride of […]
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Redwood Rollers vs. Emerald City Roller Girls
The women of roller derby are terrifying athletes. The bouts are frenzied rushes of skaters racing around a tight circular track. Pumping their bodies to speed on the quick straight-aways, the racers push and grease their way around defenders to score points as they pass opposing skaters. Last Saturday night at Redwood Acres, a packed […]
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Midlife: A Beginner’s Guide to Blur
The standard line on Blur is that they were never able to crack America because they were just too English. They sing about super-British stuff that we just don’t get, like "bank holidays" and how things are "rubbish" and something called a "quango" (look it up). Blur’s one foray into the American rock scene, the […]